The present invention is directed to systems and methods for enhancing security associated with electronic communications. More specifically, without limitation, the present invention relates to computer-based systems and methods for assessing security risks and identifying and responding to threats in wireless network environments.
The Internet is a global network of connected computer networks. Over the last several years, the Internet has grown in significant measure. A large number of computers on the Internet provide information in various forms. Anyone with a computer connected to the Internet can potentially tap into this vast pool of information.
The information available via the Internet encompasses information available via a variety of types of application layer information servers such as SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol), POP3 (Post Office Protocol), GOPHER (RFC 1436), WAIS, HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol, RFC 2616) and FTP (file transfer protocol, RFC 1123).
One of the most wide spread method of providing information over the Internet is via the World Wide Web (the Web). The Web consists of a subset of the computers connected to the Internet; the computers in this subset run Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) servers (Web servers). Several extensions and modifications to HTTP have been proposed including, for example, an extension framework (RFC 2774) and authentication (RFC 2617). Information on the Internet can be accessed through the use of a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI, RFC 2396). A URI uniquely specifies the location of a particular piece of information on the Internet. A URI will typically be composed of several components. The first component typically designates the protocol by which the address piece of information is accessed (e.g., HTTP, GOPHER, etc.). This first component is separated from the remainder of the URI by a colon (‘:’). The remainder of the URI will depend upon the protocol component. Typically, the remainder designates a computer on the Internet by name, or by IP number, as well as a more specific designation of the location of the resource on the designated computer. For instance, a typical URI for an HTTP resource might be:                http://www.server.com/dir1/dir2/resource.htm        
where http is the protocol, www.server.com is the designated computer and /dir1/dir2/resouce.htm designates the location of the resource on the designated computer. The term URI includes Uniform Resource Names (URN's) including URN's as defined according to RFC 2141.
Web servers host information in the form of Web pages; collectively the server and the information hosted are referred to as a Web site. A significant number of Web pages are encoded using the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) although other encodings using extensible Markup Language (XML) or XHTML. The published specifications for these languages are incorporated by reference herein; such specifications are available from the World Wide Web Consortium and its Web site (http://www.w3c.org). Web pages in these formatting languages may include links to other Web pages on the same Web site or another. As will be known to those skilled in the art, Web pages may be generated dynamically by a server by integrating a variety of elements into a formatted page prior to transmission to a Web client. Web servers, and information servers of other types, await requests for the information from Internet clients.
Client software has evolved that allows users of computers connected to the Internet to access this information. Advanced clients such as Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer allow users to access software provided via a variety of information servers in a unified client environment. Typically, such client software is referred to as browser software.
Electronic mail (e-mail) is another wide spread application using the Internet. A variety of protocols are often used for e-mail transmission, delivery and processing including SMTP and POP3 as discussed above. These protocols refer, respectively, to standards for communicating e-mail messages between servers and for server-client communication related to e-mail messages. These protocols are defined respectively in particular RFC's (Request for Comments) promulgated by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). The SMTP protocol is defined in RFC 821, and the POP3 protocol is defined in RFC 1939.
Since the inception of these standards, various needs have evolved in the field of e-mail leading to the development of further standards including enhancements or additional protocols. For instance, various enhancements have evolved to the SMTP standards leading to the evolution of extended SMTP. Examples of extensions may be seen in (1) RFC 1869 that defines a framework for extending the SMTP service by defining a means whereby a server SMTP can inform a client SMTP as to the service extensions it supports and in (2) RFC 1891 that defines an extension to the SMTP service, which allows an SMTP client to specify (a) that delivery status notifications (DSNs) should be generated under certain conditions, (b) whether such notifications should return the contents of the message, and (c) additional information, to be returned with a DSN, that allows the sender to identify both the recipient(s) for which the DSN was issued, and the transaction in which the original message was sent.
In addition, the IMAP protocol has evolved as an alternative to POP3 that supports more advanced interactions between e-mail servers and clients. This protocol is described in RFC 2060.
The various standards discussed herein by reference to particular RFC's are hereby incorporated by reference herein for all purposes. These RFC's are available to the public through the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and can be retrieved from its Web site (http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html). The specified protocols are not intended to be limited to the specific RFC's quoted herein above but are intended to include extensions and revisions thereto. Such extensions and/or revisions may or may not be encompassed by current and/or future RFC's.
A host of e-mail server and client products have been developed in order to foster e-mail communication over the Internet. E-mail server software includes such products as sendmail-based servers, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes Server, and Novell GroupWise; sendmail-based servers refer to a number of variations of servers originally based upon the sendmail program developed for the UNIX operating systems. A large number of e-mail clients have also been developed that allow a user to retrieve and view e-mail messages from a server; example products include Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Outlook Express, Netscape Messenger, and Eudora. In addition, some e-mail servers, or e-mail servers in conjunction with a Web server, allow a Web browser to act as an e-mail client using the HTTP standard.
As the Internet has become more widely used, it has also created new risks for corporations. Breaches of computer security by hackers and intruders and the potential for compromising sensitive corporate information are a very real and serious threat.
Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) offer a quick and effective extension of a wired network or standard local area network (LAN). FIG. 1 depicts a typical LAN 190 including both wired and wireless components. The wired component depicted in FIG. 1 includes a variety of connected systems including local servers 120, local clients 130 and network accessible data storage components 110. By simply installing access points 180A, 180B to the wired network (e.g., Ethernet 150 and router 140), personal computers and laptops equipped with WLAN cards 170A, 170B can connect with the wired network at broadband speeds.
Over the last few years, most deployments of WLANs have conformed to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11b standard that operates over the unregulated 2.4 GHz frequency spectrum. The 802.11b standard offers connectivity of up to 11 Mbps—fast enough to handle large e-mail attachments and run bandwidth-intensive applications like video conferencing. While the 802.11b standard now dominates the WLAN market, other variations of the 802.11 standard, such as 802.11a, 802.11g, and 802.1X, are being developed to handle increased speeds. WLAN vendors have committed to supporting a variety of standards. The various 802.11 standards developed by the IEEE are available for download via URL:                http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/802.11.html; these various standards are hereby incorporated by this reference herein.        
As businesses connected their LANs to the Internet 160, they installed firewalls 145 to protect their local networks and act as security gates to fend off unauthorized traffic coming from the Internet's information highway such as potential hacker 135. The mobility of air-bound, wireless networks creates security concerns where threats can come from any direction and are not limited to the wired infrastructure. Established security practices of guarding a few wired entry points to the network are no longer effective. A firewall 145 may effectively deter an attack from a wired hacker 135 via the Internet 160; however, wireless hackers 195A, 195B typically enter the LAN 190 through access points 180A, 180B that are already behind the firewall 145. Companies must constantly monitor their airwaves to survey wireless activity and guard against intruders.
Because wireless communication is broadcast over radio waves, eavesdroppers 195A, 195B who merely listen to the airwaves can easily pick up unencrypted messages. Additionally, messages encrypted with the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) security protocol can be decrypted with a little time and easily available hacking tools. These passive intruders put businesses at risk of exposing sensitive information to corporate espionage.
The theft of an authorized user's identity poses one the greatest threats. Service Set Identifiers (SSIDs) that act as crude passwords and Media Access Control (MAC) addresses that act as personal identification numbers are often used to verify that clients are authorized to connect with an access point. However, existing encryption standards are not foolproof and allow knowledgeable intruders to pick up approved SSIDs and MAC addresses to connect to a WLAN as an authorized user with the ability to steal bandwidth, corrupt or download files, and wreak havoc on the entire network.
Outsiders who cannot gain access to a WLAN can none-the-less pose security threats by jamming or flooding the airwaves with static noise that causes WLAN signals to collide and produce CRC errors. These Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks effectively shut down the wireless network in a similar way that DoS attacks affect wired networks.
Careless and deceitful actions by both loyal and disgruntled employees also present security risks and performance issues to wireless networks with unauthorized access points, improper security measures, and network abuses. Because a simple WLAN can be easily installed by attaching a $150 access point to a wired network and a $100 WLAN card to a laptop, employees are deploying unauthorized WLANs or peer-to-peer wireless connections 175 when IT departments are slow to adopt the new technology.
Incorrectly configured access points are an avoidable but significant hole in WLAN security. Many access points are initially configured to broadcast unencrypted SSIDs of authorized users. While SSIDs are intended to be passwords to verify authorized users, intruders can easily steal an unencrypted SSID to assume the identity of an authorized user.
Authorized users can also threaten the integrity of the network with abuses that drain connection speeds, consume bandwidth, and hinder a WLAN's overall performance. A few users who clog the network by trading large files such as MP3 audio or MPEG video files can affect the productivity of everyone on the wireless network.
The systems and methods according to the present invention provide solutions to these and other security and/or management issues associated with WLANs and/or encrypted computer networks.